Balfe Street

Formerly ‘Pitt Street’, this is one of two streets in Dublin named for Michael William Balfe (1808–70), composer and musician, best known for his opera ‘The Bohemian Girl’, and the aria ‘I dreamt I dwelt in Marble Halls’. (The other is Balfe Road, Walkinstown.)

Originally part of Harry Street,¹ it became its own street, as it were, when Chatham Street was laid out in the early 1770s, joining, as it does, those two streets.

It is named as ‘Pitt Street’ in a map of 1800,² and in the street directories from 1803.³

That name was from William Pitt the Younger, son of the first Earl of Chatham, from whom comes Chatham Street. Pitt, as Prime Minister, was the chief architect of the the Act of Union (1801).

The suggestion that the street be renamed first appears in the pages of Dublin Evening Telegraph, in 1914.⁴ That it be named ‘Balfe Street’ was suggested by Frances Carey, who lived on the street,⁵ Michael William Balfe having been born at 10 Pitt Street on 15 May 1808.⁶

It took until 1916 for the residents of the street, including a Mr Carey, to petition the Corporation to change the name to Balfe Street.⁷

The Corporation duly made the change on 8 January 1917.⁸

1. M’Cready, p. 82.
2. Robert Pool and John Cash, Views of the Most Remarkable Public Buildings, Monuments and Other Edifices in the City of Dublin (Dublin, 1780).
3. Wilson’s Dublin Directory for the year 1803 (Dublin, 1803).
4. ‘Pitt Street’, Dublin Evening Telegraph, 29 May 1914, p. 5.
5. ‘Pitt Street’, Dublin Evening Telegraph, 29 May 1914, p. 5.
6. Sinéad Sturgeon, ‘Michael William Balfe (1808–70)’, Dictionary of Irish Biography (https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.000335.v1).
7. Reports 1916/24.
8. Minutes 1917/31.